Quotes from David Mitchell

Perhaps where text slides toward ambiguity, film inclines to specificity. A novel contains as many versions of itself as it has readers, whereas a film's final cut vaporizes every other way it might have been made.

Your environment affects you wherever you are.

I still haven't quite got used to eating live fish.

People like to say that East Asians in general, and Japanese in particular, are not very expressive: there's that term 'inscrutable.' But often, Europeans just don't get the Asian codes. Believe me, the message is being expressed OK.

Reality is the page. Life is the word.

A life can get knocked into a new orbit by a car crash, a lottery win or just a bleary-eyed consultant giving bad news in a calm voice.

I'm not a great deep political thinker.

I remain thankful to God for all his mercies.

Time is what stops history happening at once; time is the speed at which the past disappears.

maybe the meaning of life lies in looking for it

Don't bemoan your misspent life quite yet. Forgive me for flaunting my experience, but you have no conception of what a misspent life constitutes.

I rarely ever put my head above the rampart and see where this big lumbering behemoth called 'global literature' is going.

We looked at each other for the last time; nothing is as eloquent as nothing.

When I think about it, I'm happily bewildered that people will preorder my books They'll preorder me. What a lucky guy!

I had a happy childhood.

I'm from a time and place where bigheadedness was a really savage crime, and you'd get cut down for it by your peers and parents.

Oh, bein' young ain't easy 'cos ev'rythin' you're puzzlin'n'anxin' you're puzzlin'n'anxin' it for the first time.

Time is the speed at which the past decays.

False modesty can be worse than arrogance.

Every relationship has its own language. It takes a long time to evolve and read one another. Just as it's true for people, it's also true on a national or cultural level.

I can't bear living in this huge beautiful world and not try to imitate it as best I can.

Loneliness is an integral part of travelling. I used to think it was the downside to travelling, but now I realise it is a necessary educative part of it to be embraced.

Truth is singular. Its 'versions' are mistruths.

Love's pure free joy when it works, but when it goes bad you pay for the good hours at loan-shark prices.